On April 18, Xiaomi officially released the 13 Ultra.
As soon as this new machine was unveiled, it conquered users with the world's brightest screen and outstanding Leica Summicron lens.
1. The popular Mi 13 Ultra
At this press conference, Mi 13 Ultra was launched together with five new Xiaomi technological ecological products, including Mi TV Master 86" Mini LED, Mi Pad 6, Mi Band 8, Mi Sound Move portable smart speaker, and Mijia leather lamp. Against the background of a number of new ecological products with stronger functions, Mi 13 Ultra is more prominent-this new machine that focuses on image experience can be regarded as the benchmark in Xiaomi's entire model matrix in terms of appearance design and functional experience. The most attractive feature of this machine is its outline. The camera module on the back. Under the meticulous design of the Xiaomi team, the module part not only inherits the traditional deep "Oreo" large ring structure, but also embellishes it with a "texture golden ring" to make it fashionable.
The machine's plain leather is made of the second-generation nano-leather technology, allowing users to directly touch the texture close to the camera's leather. Under the three color schemes of olive green, black and white as a whole, it is more classic and noble. Under the dazzling appearance, Xiaomi has brought a new breakthrough in video experience that is extremely exciting to the user group. It uses a new Leica Summicron lens, a new generation of photosensitive elements, and an innovative combination of 1 50-megapixel IMX989 (wide-angle main camera) + 3 50-megapixel IMX858 (ultra-wide-angle, telephoto, periscope telephoto) to achieve full coverage of all focal lengths from 12mm to 120mm, allowing users to easily shoot the desired "big shots" in multiple scenarios. Because of this, the new phone has become the focus of heated discussions long before its official release. Many technology big Vs immediately released their own evaluations after getting the new machine, and some professional media even gave the machine an evaluation of Xiaomi's "imaging machine king".
The cool, stylish, deep and charming appearance, coupled with the rare top-level flagship video experience on the market, made Mi 13 Ultra popular as soon as it went on sale, becoming a rare "machine king" in the market in recent years with both word-of-mouth and sales peaking. In fact, the mobile phone industry has already predicted that it will be a big hit when the conference is still going on. And users did find that before the phone was officially launched for sale, its e-commerce search data increased by 7 times under the high attention of all parties. As soon as the first sale opened on the morning of May 4, the rush to buy from all parties showed a trend of "rushing to the gate", so that most merchants raised prices ranging from 300 to 400 yuan during pre-sales.
It is particularly worth noting that despite the three-year continuous decline in the global mobile phone market, mobile phone “scalpers” in many places have shown strong confidence in the newly released Mi 13 Ultra. They often snap up the phone at a price increase of 500 to 600 yuan. Mi 13 Ultra has set a price system for the first sale of 12+256G for 5999, 12+512G for 6499, and 16+1TB for 7299, which is obviously biased towards the mid-to-high-end market. And the consumer groups who have just emerged from the shadow of the epidemic, not only were not "dissuaded" by this price system, but instead showed impressive enthusiasm. According to internal sources, the first-sale shipments of Mi 13 Ultra have exceeded three times that of the previous generation of products. No wonder it is evaluated online as "earn it if you grab it" and "even the scalpers like it" a new generation of explosive models!
2. Behind the fiery Mi 13 Ultra
Behind the hot sale is the high satisfaction of the user group with the new phone. And the direct source of this kind of satisfaction is the ultimate breakthrough that Mi 13 Ultra has brought to consumers in terms of key image experience. First of all, as mentioned earlier, the Mi 13 Ultra achieves seamless coverage of multiple focal lengths through the perfect combination of Leica Summicron lenses and a new generation of photosensitive elements. It supports up to six focal lengths within the zoom range from 12mm to 240mm. What makes photography lovers even more delighted is that the apertures of the three sub-cameras of the new machine have all been enlarged, and the amount of light entering has increased by 14-43% compared with the previous generation, thus bringing stronger comprehensive light-sensing capabilities.
Just as importantly, the Mi 13 Ultra is also equipped with a variable aperture this time, allowing users to highlight the subject more with the excellent background blur function of the f/1.9 aperture. You can also take advantage of the f/4.0 aperture's strong expressive power for near and far details to shoot images with more narrative capabilities. The unique night owl mode Ultra and full-focus capture can not only perfectly image the night scene, but also achieve delicate and warm effects during motion. The street shooting mode specially launched by Xiaomi allows users to quickly enter the "one-inch, F4.0 aperture, hyperfocal distance shooting" mode in 0.8 seconds by double-clicking the volume button, which is fun. Such a masterpiece, how can users who attach great importance to video experience not be fascinated?
Of course, as a flagship of the "machine emperor" level, Mi 13 Ultra will certainly not only focus on the image aspect. In fact, the new phone is remarkable in terms of communication quality, battery life, screen performance, etc. Even if it is split, it is very competitive in the market. In terms of core configuration, Mi 13 Ultra uses the "performance iron triangle" combination of the second-generation Snapdragon 8+LPDDR5X+UFS 4.0 to ensure that the new machine has an excellent experience in various business, entertainment applications, and large-scale game operations. Many users have noticed that Xiaomi has responded to the unanimous call of the previous consumer groups and upgraded the transmission interface to USB 3.2 on the Xiaomi Mi 13 Ultra. The transmission speed of the new interface can be increased to 20Gbps, natively supports multi-channel, and the performance advantage of doubling the channel is obvious. Its transmission rate is doubled compared with the previous generation of USB 3.1, and it is more popular among professional users.
In terms of battery life, Mi 13 Ultra is equipped with a 5000mAh capacity battery and supports 90W wired fast charging + 50W wireless fast charging. In addition, equipped with Xiaomi Surging P2 and G1 chips, it realizes the support for the emergency long battery life mode, so that the new phone can still last for 60 minutes even with the last 1% power. This is of great significance for mobile business applications and senior users who love outdoors. In terms of signal quality, the new phone uses Xiaomi's self-developed dual-wing antenna group, which can increase the full-frequency signal by 58%. With the addition of an independent 5G antenna, the n78 signal has increased by 100%. At the same time, the phone adopts a fully symmetrical signal design, and the 360° signal is anti-grip, making the user's signal experience more powerful and stable. In terms of heat dissipation performance, the new machine adopts the self-developed annular cooling pump heat dissipation technology, which increases the heat dissipation capacity to three times that of the traditional heat dissipation VC. Coupled with powerful configurations such as low-power Bluetooth, multi-function NFC, 5G dual-card dual-pass, infrared remote control, X-axis motor, IP68 dust-proof and water-repellent, and dual-lift, Mi 13 Ultra can be described as the king of the bucket machine among flagship phones. It has stronger overall strength in terms of functional experience and cost-effectiveness.
3. Imaging has become an upward driving force for Xiaomi mobile phones
It is obvious that while the overall functions of Mi 13 Ultra have been improved, the breakthrough and upgrade of its image experience is the core driving force behind the hot sale of the new phone. And Xiaomi's eye-catching breakthrough and upgrade road in terms of imaging has actually officially started 3 years ago. Senior users still clearly remember that as early as 2019, Xiaomi successfully customized the world's first 108-megapixel ultra-large mobile phone CMOS. By 2020, Xiaomi will configure the industry's first 8K movie camera on the Mi 10 Pro, and on the Mi 10 Ultra, the industry will achieve a 120x ultra-telephoto zoom for the first time in the industry. Starting from the Mi 12S Ultra released in 2022, Xiaomi has set a precedent in the industry, and jointly developed the IMX989 sensor with Sony, which brings amazing imaging quality with its shocking one-inch super outsole. And it is the first time to achieve in-depth cooperation with Leica. Based on the accumulation of Xiaomi's mobile imaging technology, combined with Leica's century-old optical technology and tone precipitation, it brings the original Leica tone on mobile devices for the first time. "Authentic Leica".
The just-released Mi 13 Ultra marks Xiaomi's next step of exploration, and is committed to solving an important proposition on the way forward for moving images-how to make good use of computational photography. Mi 13 Ultra is equipped with the most perfect Summicron lens jointly designed and developed by Xiaomi and Leica. It truly brings Leica's professional optical capabilities to the era of mobile imaging systematically, allowing mobile devices to truly have excellent optical performance and camera-like creative capabilities. As Matthias Harsch, CEO of Leica Camera Company, emphasized: "Smartphones with such an excellent imaging experience like Xiaomi Mi 13 Ultra are unprecedented." Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi, further emphasized: Mi 13 Ultra is not only the release of a brand-new professional flagship mobile phone for humanistic imaging, but also the "second chapter" of Xiaomi's imaging strategic upgrade. So far, Xiaomi's image upgrade road has opened a new chapter, and it will also lead Xiaomi on the road to the high-end market, and go steadily and far.
From the evolution of several generations of products, it can be seen that after several generations of machine iterations, imaging has become the differentiated competitive advantage of Xiaomi mobile phones. The market and consumer groups also saw a different Xiaomi in Mi 13 Ultra. It has obviously got rid of the old model of competing with other manufacturers for stacking strength in the past, but pays more attention to achieving differentiated competitive advantages by continuously strengthening long boards such as imaging. For example, Mi 13 Ultra did not fall into the routine of many manufacturers on the market to one-sidedly emphasize parameters, but started a new journey of in-depth exploration in terms of image experience. The street photography mode it brings has become a powerful tool for senior enthusiasts to pursue humanistic photography. The professional primary color mode created by it realizes the full-link primary color from shooting to presentation, bringing a full-link optical professional creative experience. Because of this, in the minds of users, Mi Imaging has increasingly got rid of the shackles of homogeneity and has become one of the pronouns of high-end mobile phones.
Xiaomi's upward high-end road with imaging as the core and driving force has achieved fruitful results so far. In 2022, the three waves of high-end flagships released by Xiaomi, Mi 12S Ultra, Mi MIX Fold2 and Mi 13 series, all have a user praise rate of more than 98% on the e-commerce platform. With vigorous efforts to promote high-end, Xiaomi has achieved a year-on-year increase in high-end smartphone shipments of 6.8% and a year-on-year increase in smartphone ASPs of over 14% in the fourth quarter. According to third-party data disclosure, since the release of the Mi 13 series at the end of last year, Xiaomi has ranked first in the domestic Android market in the price range of 4,000-6,000 for seven consecutive weeks, securing its position in the mid-to-high-end market. After the Mi 13 series landed on the global market in February this year, it has also won high overseas praise. The well-known media Forbes gave it a high degree of recognition as "a mobile phone comparable to cameras".